Goodbye Oakland Athletics

Antagonizing observers of baseball will point out this is the last year the A’s will play in Oakland. Strangers in the airport lounge see my A’s polo, my most comfortable shirt to travel in, and jab at me. I get it. We decided to say goodbye to the Oakland Coliseum in July.

Stomper in Jack London Square. The superior long snouted variety. A few years ago they tried a more cartoonish elephant design, glad that didn’t work out.

Oakland has great pizza and breweries. Citizen Pizza inside Original Pattern Brewing Company makes for a great evening. We never felt unsafe walking around. Yes, there are homeless people, if you are offended by seeing them – shame on you. People walked their dogs. Hung out. It’s a cool city. Why do we keep turning our backs on things not shiny and new?

The Coliseum has great sightlines, the food is better than my home team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. They are World Series contenders for god’s sake and you can’t get a decent hot dog (sorry, not sorry Bar-S).

It’s old, but really not that bad. The event staff was awesome, everyone was very friendly. Some of the staff openly lamented the upcoming closure because it was mentioned many times to them while they were serving guests. “Better have another Holy Toledo, we don’t know if they will keep making it after the season is over.”

Thanks for sharing a goodbye with us. Thanks for the memories. 💗